Last Fall, a producer from the Magnolia Network reached out to me because they came across this site and thought the Big Brown Fambam might have a story that would make sense for their program, Recipe Lost and Found.
And sure enough, we delivered.
Here’s the preview
You can catch the full episode on Discovery Plus.
It’s true. I started boxing a little over a year ago. I wrote about my experience for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.
They have a paywall, so I’ve included the text below:
There’s a 900 sq ft boxing gym, tucked into the furthermost corner of a well worn strip mall on the northside of Arrow Highway where Azusa’s city limits rub against Covina’s. You have to want to find Valverde Boxing Gym to see it. I found it 8 months ago as a 47 year old dad looking to lose some pandemic weight. In the process, I’ve learned the sport of boxing, and the consecrated place and space where it happens, the gym, reflect the values that ground our pride during Hispanic Heritage Month (and beyond).
Take for example the ambition of gym owners, Daniel and Yuridia Valverde. Daniel came to the United States in 2005 from Coahuilla, Mexico, landing first in Philadelphia where he took odd jobs, squeezing in time to train at renowned Philly boxing gyms, and then onto New York City for a brief work stint and finally in Los Angeles, where he turned his boxing expertise into a business. His wife, Yuri, is foundational to the operation.
Together, at 6:30 am, they open the gym doors Monday through Friday and close them around 9:00 pm, as the last student and her parents amble out. You’ll find their 6, 5, 3 and 1 year old children at the gym, the three oldest boys not only learning to bob and weave but also tossing baseballs and playing tag. The gym has almost 100 students and Daniel trains a handful of professional fighters. These fights take him across the country, away from the gym and his wife and kids. In boxing, you fight to eat.
Enter the gym and you’ll note the diversity of people piling in. Even if most of the students are Hispanic, their stories and stations are varied. You’ll find Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, Central and South Americans. Some students are Black. Others are Korean, And still others, Polish and Chinese. Filipino, too. You’ll find a lawyer, a bouncer, a former San Gabriel Valley Mayor. Women and children. And even as all those distinctions serve to differentiate gym goers, it’s all but erased when they enter the ring. There isn’t a degree or strand of DNA that can block an overhand right. The ring is the great equalizer.
As for me, I’m pulled towards environments where people volunteer to suffer together in pursuit of a higher goal…or lighter weight. I make my way into the gym 4 mornings a week. I’m there for an hour or two, jumping rope, shadow boxing, hitting the pads and the bags and on Fridays, other students. That’s when we spar. There’s often a palpable sense of adrenaline and dread on those days. I rely on the adrenaline to get me over the ropes and into the ring. The adrenaline keeps my hands up and my head moving. And if things go according to plan, I’ll be punched several times by a grown man training to throw punches.
You can understand the dread.
But while there is ferocity in the ring there is also charity. I often face off against students with more experience and skills. They punch faster and harder than me. But we share a coach. We share a gym. We share an objective. So there’s an implicit agreement that teaching and learning is more important than hurling and hurting. Nevertheless, I’ve been hit. I’ve been hurt. I’ve been back.
At Valverde Boxing Gym, I’m reminded there’s much to celebrate. Our ambition, courage, and persistence are on display, not only in gyms across the USA and not only during Hispanic Heritage Month, but always, everywhere.
Carlos Aguilar lives in Covina and is Editorial Director at Quantasy and Associates, a full service advertising agency in downtown Los Angeles.
This article is part of a series in partnership with Lalo, an ad-free social media app for family and friends. Share your memories in a safe and private space.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It has all the splendor of Christmas with (almost) none of the disappointment. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure I’ll wear those Daffy Duck boxers sooner or later, kids but the way this Candied Pumpkin Cheesecake Pie is hitting right now, it’s a no-brainer. Color me team turkey.
.It’s not that we need to go about the business of comparing holidays. It’s just that the last quarter of each year is filled with so much action for Big Brown Fambam, with back to school, flag football, tall flags, two birthdays and five holidays, we have to prioritize and minimize, rank then file.
Each Thanksgiving, we go BIG. And by we, I mean my aunt Missy. She doesn’t play.
Having been the thankful recipient of high quality Thanksgivings, allow me to offer a few ways to elevate your Thanksgivings moving forward.
If there’s food there’s photos and video, too. Help yourself by getting a haircut, trimming the facials and putting on Thursday’s best. It’s Fall. Pull out the faux cashmere and lone pair of brown dress shoes.
I’m as American as they come. Born in California, I’ve pledged allegiance to the flag (up until 3rd grade) and treat football as my religion. While proud of our Mexican heritage, you won’t find a lick of Mexican food on our table (notwithstanding the fact that turkeys are native to North America. Probably pumpkins, too. And corn). We save tamales and menudo for Christmas and New Year. On this high holiday, though, color me pilgrim.
Also, fuck the pilgrims.
Fun. Games. Gossip. We’re having a blast. But when it’s time for the prayer, I suggest exercising discernment. If the person praying is most familiar with Grace and Mercy because they dance at Spearmint Rhino, have them step aside. Similarly, if the person praying hasn’t confessed their sin in the last year, they’ll be tempted to do so during this prayer, so please have them step away, too.
Your best bet is to let one of the kids pray, even if they’re most thankful for Xbox.
Look. I’ve seen the photos from Thanksgiving dinners from across the country. Many of them violate the principles laid out above. Haircuts that weren’t. Weird beards. Foul food. And some straight hood activities, including stepping outside before family prayer to smoke another blunt with your primo because you still have 9 minutes before the turkey hits the table.
Some of these moments are best kept within a tight circle. That’s why I recommend Lalo, an app where you can keep memories in a secure, private, ad-free environment. You can add family and friends to the memory capsule and enjoy the excuses about why you and your cousin smelled like a Christmas tree while at the Thanksgiving table.
This article is part of a series in partnership with Lalo, an ad-free social media app for family and friends. Share your memories in a safe and private space.
I just finished the last of my kids’ Halloween candy, almost two weeks after trotting around the neighborhood in army green makeup.
While this is our thirteenth consecutive family Halloween costume ensemble, it’s the first time I’ve lathered my face with $13 worth of shmear. And why not? We enjoy Halloween because we can hide in plain sight. And because of the free Peanut M&Ms.
When you start a family you soon realize each partner comes with their own Halloween baggage. Halloween was a blast when I was a lad but alas my enthusiasm didn’t hold. It was a lower-tier holiday, an anticlimactic punctuation to my birthday month. So I was reluctant when Big Brown Mom suggested we dive headfirst into the holiday after the birth of our daughter, Maya. And even more when Joaquin came along.
Big Brown Mom didn’t do much Halloweening as a kid. But she wanted to change that for Maya and Woks. She has skills and determination and a growth mindset. She’s worked her magic on cloth and lace, corduroy and denim. She’s sowed, even hemmed. But never, ever hawed. We’ve been mutant turtles and cereal box characters, The Flintstones, the cast of Scooby Doo and the 4 faces of Michael Jackson (see: no blackface). This year, after floating a dozen or so options and then voting, we went with classic monsters.
Sure enough, we hit thrift stores and halloween stores and makeup stores and convenience stores and candy stores to get everything we needed for the getting. And then the good news came that we were going to be able to wear our costumes twice! We got invited to a Halloween Party!
This also meant that our costumes would be under closer scrutiny. So Big Brown Mom was determined there’d be no slacking or lacking. And I can’t front, we looked pretty fly. Sure, showing up in a well executed costume is a statement. But showing up as a family ensemble is a moment. Indeed, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
But I have to tell you my favorite part each year is looking back at the photos from years prior. They’re time capsules. They’re treasures. They’re fucking hilarious, too. I take videos of the process. I capture Big Brown Mom transforming into Big Brown Stage Mom, nipping, tucking and preening her work.
Some of these photos and videos are meant for public consumption. But not all of them. That’s one reason I value Lalo. It’s a private but social space for my family and loved ones to preserve and share personal memories.
So while you might see select pictures and videos of Big Brown Family on the gram, you’ll never see the footage of me wrestling the last bag of Peanut M&M’s from Maya’s hands because the tears were too embarrassing. But I couldn’t help it. She pulled my hair.
There’s always next year.
I started boxing December 2021 at Valverde Boxing Club in Azusa, California.
Only a mile from my house, the gym is tucked into the corner of a sagging strip mall, squeezed in between a medical clinic and dance studio, and only only three doors from a sub par panaderia with weak-ass pumpkin empanadas.
I get my ass up early Monday through Friday, drink Mestizo and Athletic Greens and some protein and some collagen and some green tea extract and some Vitamin D-3 and alpha lipoic acid, so that I’m punching air and leather by 7am with the rest of the morning crew. By my estimations, 95% of the nearly 100 students who attend the gym have no aspirations of becoming a professional boxer. Like me, they practice for the sake of fitness and for an appreciation of the art and science of the sport. And to kick some ass, of course.
Earlier this year, a new face joined us in the morning. I overheard he was a boxer from Brazil. And by the looks of it, he ran from San Paolo to Azusa…that morning.
As it turned out, the boxer was Sidney King Rosa, a professional fighter who’d come to California to train with Daniel Valerde, in pursuit of bigger fights against better opponents . Rosa (5-0-0) will have his chance this Friday, May 13th in Detroit, Michigan when he faces off for the NABF Jr. Super Welter title against defending champ Ermal Hadribeaj.
Mestizo had the opportunity to serve as a sponsor for this match. You’ll see Mestizo on Rosa’s shorts.
I sent the Ring King a few questions in advance of the fight.
Q+A
4. How do you think this fight will go? We’re going to win, the goals are working on taking advantage of his mistakes and keeping my rhythm.
5. Tell me about your relationship with your trainer. The relationship with Danny is amazing. We really understand each other, he’s increasing in my technique and we’re working a lot of fundamentals. We talk about everything, boxing and life, stuff that I’ll bring for the rest of my life. I’m even learn Spanish with him 😅.
6. How’s the boxing community in Los Angeles? This is one of the things that surprise me a lot. There’s a lot of gym around and they take it to the other level. We were sparring at some gyms and the sparring looks like fight. They take it so serious, it’s helped me a lot. I’m not the same fighter after that.
7. Why do you fight? I I fell in love with the beauty of the science of boxing, it’s something incredible, self knowledge, self improvement, boxing speaks a lot about who practices it, we will never be good enough and that’s why we are always learning and practicing everyday in gym.
We know King Rosa has worked hard and deserves to win. I’ll update this post with video after this weekend. Let’s go, King!
We recently received breaking news on the wire. Big Brown Dad is now peddling stimulants.
We wanted to learn more, so we arranged for a sit-down interview. We can neither confirm nor deny where Big Brown Dad was sitting during this interview and whether or not the throne involved a flushing mechanism.
Q: Yo. You think this is cute? This whole ask yourself questions shtick?
A: Cute? Absolutely not. Handsome? Arguably.
Q: So what’s this coffee thing? Don’t you have enough going on, you know, with raising a secret family on the side?
A: Bruh. What the fuck?
Q: People don’t like reading lame Q&A’s so I thought I’d spice this up, nahmean?
A: That’s cute.
Q: Mestizo? What is it? And where were you on the night of December 24th, 2020?
A: That’s a great question. I sent my Mom and Aunt a link to the mestizo.coffee site the other day after launch. My mom asked if she can just “…buy the chocolate” and my aunt was surprised to learn that I was “…selling shakes.” So, you know, I understand that it’s not always clear to everybody what Mestizo is.
Q: Ay, bro. Don’t be talking about my Mom and my Aunt like that. I’ll fuck you up and make you drink milk.
A: Cute.
Q: So…Mestizo?
A: Ok, I guess it’s important to start with the word itself and, as is the case with any word with historical racial denotations and contemporary (sometimes conflicting) connotations, how any one person takes the word Mestizo will depend on their own experience.
Q: Cute.
A: One of my core principles is to work towards redefinition—to challenge assumptions, turn conventional thinking on its head and to find truth in unexpected places. So whatever your definition—or even—the prevailing definition of Mestizo turns it to be, its real world meaning is in constant state of negotiation. Essentially, tho, Mestizo represents the possibility of a new way coming from an old way.
Q: Wait, do you sell coffee or dime-store philosophy?
Q: Aye. People are low-key getting tired of reading this shit. Anything else you want to say?
A: Yes. I sell the best coffee coming out of Mexico. It’s roasted by the best Mexican-American roaster in the country. And it costs less than comparable coffees by hipster roasting operations. Consider subscribing and putting your support behind a cool Mexican-American experiment in creative entrepreneurship.
Q: Cute.
Why waste time with words when there is vi…
When we were Seniors at Occidental College, me and the homie La Mont Terry concocted a plan, no…a scheme…nay…a heist.
We were determined to get paid for what we did best. No, not categorizing girls on campus based on their likely biblical counterparts. Eating. And writing. But mostly eating.
We wanted to eat for that heralded tribune, that paper of record, The Occidental. Had we eaten for the paper before? No. Was that gonna stop us? Potentially. Did it?
No.
I negotiated a $30 meal subsidy from the Editor in Chief, and coupled with a $30 article remuneration, we were gucci. No, we were the tasteBUDS.
We did our thing. Bucca. CPK. Cheescake Factory.
Won an award, too. But the biggest come up of them all…of all time, even…was when we convinced The Durfee Foundation to send the tasteBUDS to China for a summer for the sole purpose of categorizing women by their likely biblical counterpart.
And to eat. We got 6 racks each.
Our only responsibility was to eat Chinese food with Chinese people and journal about it (and later give a presentation on campus). There’s a lot of funny shit to write about but I especially like a story from our first full day in Beijing. You see, we wanted to make friends.
We were in Beijing, so we jumped in a taxi, pointed to an illustrated icon of a college building in a Lonely Planet and said, “Go. Here. Pliz.” Sure enough, we muscled our way through 99 minutes of traffic and finally onto Beijing University (colloquially referred to as Beida). Beida is China’s MIT. We didn’t know that. We didn’t know shit.
When we stepped on campus, we walked aimlessly for 15 minutes, searching for any friendly white face who might save, er, help us make sense of the campus. After a day and a half of miming, we needed a hit of English.
Instead, we came across a half dozen Chinese students dribbling a basketball.
“Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit,” I thought to myself. “I talk basketball. I got game.”
Lamont? Not so much.
So I stepped to the crew and did my best caveman: “You. Ball. Me. Ball. Together. Shoot. Ball.”
And the Chinese graduate student in British Literature responded to me with most pleasant Anglican lilt I’d ever countenanced:
“Surely, lad. You can join us.”
And join them we did.
Fucked around and got a triple double.
Recently, researchers at Harvard discovered the gene that codes for Hip Hop. The breakthrough confirms what many heads have long suspected: if your mom and dad have swag, this greatly increases your chance of inheriting it.
And such is the case with today’s Hip Hop Pops, a Tunnel Rat cat– Rosario Macho Ortega, whose love for the outdoors and work with his prodigous son, Nahoa, proves that the rap apple doesn’t fall far from the rap tree.
We’re under quarantine, so I emailed Macho a few questions. Yes, I was wearing a mask when I sent it. No, I wasn’t wearing any pants. Yes, I was wearing shorts. No, they weren’t Dockers.
1. What’s your first hip hop memory?
I grew up in Boston in a neighborhood called Mission Park. It was essentially a nicer version of the projects because although it was subsidized housing / Section 8 it was a townhome community. (In Boston, when a hospital or university wants to develop land the city requires them to also create affordable housing… just an interesting fact).
In our neighborhood we had an annual block party, and people of all ages would go up and perform. When I was about 6 or 7 years old I heard a guy named “Ant” get on the microphone and just totally murder it. That was the first time I had really seen Hip Hop live and in-person in a way that really made a lasting impression on me.
2. Why did you decide to rhyme?
Those block parties had lots of memorable moments and I remember also hearing La Di Da Di for the first time when I was about 9 years old.
I had the song in my head and just memorized it from the live show. I couldn’t stop repeating the lyrics. It felt so comfortable and natural to me.
Somewhere around that same time, like 1985-1986, I also remember visiting my cousin and seeing some break dancers dance to “Jam On It.” The first time I heard that and saw them spinning on the cardboard boxes I was buggin.
Those were just 2 elements of Hip Hop culture but I wasn’t aware it was even a culture, it was just there all around me. Within at least one year I submitted my name for that local block party and did my first performance.
After that man the rest is history. I formed a group with my sister Elsie and we became New Breed. This is us in the mid 90’s
We later moved to Los Angeles to join the Tunnel Rats and created some pretty cool music for the next 10-12 years individually and collectively.
Here are a couple of classic moments rocking live
I made my last record called “Remember” in 2011 then started my business shortly thereafter and really focused on entrepreneurship and family.
3. Who’s your favorite TV dad?
It’s been a while since I’ve watched any TV shows with a traditional dad… and the most common choice has been eliminated from the running so if I have to think of another one I guess it would be Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince. Off screen I had tons of great fatherly examples in my real life. That’s one of the reasons why I always loved the idea of marriage and family. Of course I saw my share of broken families but I had great mentors who had healthy relationships and I aspired to have that in my life as well.
4. What’s your favorite family memory as a kid?
I used to love when my dad would take us all to the lake. We lived in the city and we didn’t really get a chance to be around nature too much. We would spend the whole day out there playing frisbee, jumping in the water and just hanging out. It was a very rare occasion but a very unique environment compared to where I grew up. We had a lot of challenges growing up but I always remember those specific days just being a ton of fun.
5. Tell us about your family: names, ages, interests.
I’m Macho ( real name Rosario)
I’m 43 years old.
I own a cleaning agency. And in my free time I like to go camping, hiking, bike riding, I also like to catch a good matinee and watch live music preferably straight-ahead jazz or Latin jazz if possible.
My wife is Jamie. She has a PhD in natural medicine. She owns Oasis Healing Arts in Whittier.
She’s been practicing for about 17 years and she was my original inspiration for starting my own business and being an entrepreneur. She grew up in Hawaii so naturally she loves the beach but she likes to head out to the trails and go camping with us as well. We have been married 18 years. She also homeschools our boys since she’s the smart one 🙂
My oldest son is Nahoa.
He’s 12 years old. He’s a natural talent. Singer-songwriter emcee, piano player, actor.
But when he’s not performing he’s truly a bookworm and a research nerd. The kind of kid that starts every sentence with “Did you know…” He reads anything and everything from apologetics to comics.
My youngest is Keoni. He’s 8 years old. He is a fun-loving, happy-go-lucky kid full of joy and passion. We call him “Tank” sometimes because he’s tough and unstoppable lol. He’s got a talent for cooking and hospitality, which is such a cool expression of his fiery energy. Both of my boys are having a great time with our beagle puppy, Zoe, that we just brought into the family in June. They are really raising and training her. They take that responsibility seriously and they do a great job.
Keoni is also taking up the drums.
6. What’s a movie or TV series you guys like watching together?
We like to do a lot of superhero movies. We’ve gone through the whole Marvel universe and all the DC movies as well. Jamie and I also loved the series “Homeland” and “Alone.”
7.Tell us about your passion for the outdoors. Where did it come from? Why lean into it with the family?
Well I guess based on my previous answer I got a tiny glimpse of it as a kid when my dad would take us to the lake. But for the most part I’m a city boy all the way. My brother-in-law invited us out to a camping trip about 6 years ago. It was your typical car camping but once I was out there in the woods something just clicked and as I explored all of the possibilities and talked to my brother-in-law about some of his other trips I really caught the bug. Soon thereafter we went on a backpacking trip and from that point on it was almost always wilderness camping far removed from civilization. We took the kids with us all the time, we did lots of hikes in between for conditioning and preparation and my boys have gone on 3-8 mile backpacking wilderness camping trips. You know the kind of camping where there’s no toilets, no running water, everything you pack in you have to pack out and leave no trace behind. There’s something really dope about being 10,000 ft above sea level in the middle of the forest with nobody around and as long as you come prepared it can be a great experience. Recently me and a couple of friends hiked the San Gorgonio mountains. It’s the highest peak in southern California at 11,500 ft.
We probably go on maybe six camping trips a year sometimes more and it’s a special time I get to spend with the family. Once this puppy grows up we can add her to the trail with us and she can really become part of the crew.
8. What’s a favorite camping destination?
So far San Gorgonio has been the best for me as far as personal accomplishment. But in terms of family destinations I love going to Big Bear with family. We have a cabin there but we also go camping and it’s literally a second home.
9. Tell us about your son’s music.
Yea man… Nahoa Life (his real middle name) Nahoa means “bold & brave” in Hawaiian.
Like I said before he is a natural talent. We’ve always had a piano in the house and from the time he could sit on the bench he would sit down at the piano and just start playing melodies and singing and creating since he was probably 3 years old. He watched me rap and write when he was younger and he used to spit some funnystyles freestyles as a kid (before he became self aware)
Obviously it wasn’t genius prodigy musicianship but I could tell that it was in his blood. You know I learned there’s a scripture that says “train up a child in the way that he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” To me this means that it’s my job to observe my children’s inclinations and the things that they lean into naturally. As a father I’m supposed to nurture, guide, teach and encourage those things… so that’s what I’ve been working on with him.
He is so comfortable and natural and professional in the studio it’s pretty crazy people trip out when they’re working with him. I am constantly getting feedback and comments that there’s no way he could write his own stuff just based on his age, but Nahoa is an exceptionally gifted writer. Of course as his father and someone who has written music all my life I’m involved in the process and I write with him but he’s got a lot to say and he’s only getting started.
Being a musician I honestly had mixed feelings about him aspiring to become a professional musician simply because I personally knew the cost and the challenge associated with that. We have lots of good honest discussions within our family and he’s a very smart boy. He’s able to make his own wise decisions so as his talent grew and as his love for music and performance grew, one day when he was just about to be 11 he told me that he wanted to really start pursuing music more seriously and entering contests and that whole world. So within a few months we entered a national singing competition and he won. He was offered a horrible six year 360 deal much like the ones people would get if they win The Voice so I straight-up had to turn it down. We decided from that point that I would personally produce and develop him and that’s when we started writing and recording music.
A little less than a year later in April of 2020 we released his first 3 singles along with music videos and will be releasing new music all throughout the rest of this year and next year on a very regular basis along with music videos.
He’s got an extremely bright future ahead of him. I can very clearly envision him as a mega super star. I really think that he has the potential to affect change in the world by way of people’s hearts and minds through his music. The readers can check him out for themselves and see whether or not they agree.
All of his videos are on the website
10. What advice do you have for parents looking to nurture their kids artistic pursuits?
Open honest loving conversation is key. Teaching your children who have musical or entertainment-related aspirations to think for themselves and set their own goals. I think creating their own metrics for success is in my opinion very important. Of course if you’re like me and you have experience with the industry then you should help to set realistic expectations and time frames, but as a parent I try to simply remind Nahoa of his own goals and desires and say if you want to reach this goal within this timeframe then this is what is required… so you decide if you want to watch that next TV show or if you want to go upstairs and practice the piano or write a new song or whatever.
When they see what they can accomplish with your help then they will start to take on more independent responsibility. If you are doing everything for them then I don’t see how it can be a sustainable path to success.
All that being said however, learning an instrument in our house is a non-negotiable. Becoming a mega Superstar is not the goal. Discipline, focus, creativity and expression can all be developed as one learns an instrument. So even when they are being kids and they don’t want to practice… that’s when I will step in and say there’s no choice in the matter. But in our house we don’t force classical music or even traditional theory. During their lessons they can learn to play the music they love. If they’re doing that consistently throughout their entire childhood then they will learn how to read and write music in the process even if it takes longer.
11. Where can we stay plugged into the fam?
Our IGs are
Peep our Hip Hop Pops interviews with Apakalips, Propaganda, Judah 1, Red Cloud, Elias, Shames Worthy, Bess Kepp, Legal Alien and Triune.
Have you ever met someone and was like, “Damn, if I was a Jewish hip hop lover from California, that’ s some shit I would’ve done?“
That’s what I said to myself some 10 years ago after meeting the homie Josh Heller, who I learned spent time in Mexico City teaching hip hop and English or some such cool shit. Josh does a bunch of dope media stuffs, including his most recent venture, an international record label, Viajes.Cosmicos launched w/ a buddy during quarantine. That buddy is floresflores.
The first release is from FLORES FLORES and I had a chance to send FLORES some questions in between doing dad shit like pulling weeds, pulling teeth and pulling a hamstring.
How much money have you blown last year on your music hobby?
I don’t have a music hobby. I reject the notion that this economic system puts forth, that if you don’t monetize on things they are supposed to be hobbies or luxuries. I have been preparing all of my life for this album. Being present and focused on doing things and bringing them to completion is something invaluable. And it’s way more uncomfortable and frustrating than not doing them, but is fulfilling. For me, at least.
Trying to be a better musician/producer has made me want to read more, listen to more records, learn different software, and taught me to stay curious, really. That permeates through all aspects of my life.
What level of hell do you think Mexican Americans who can’t speak Spanish occupy?
None. It’s ok if you don’t know spanish, culture and heritage go way beyond language. I mean, if you want to learn it, that’s fantastic but don’t do it out of guilt.
What’s the first album you played on repeat until your mom told you to turn that shit off because it will make you crazy?
Probably the Space Jam Soundtrack. I don’t remember driving my mother crazy by repetition, she is very musical but I do remember one day that she picked me up from high school and I put Sonic Youth’s Sister album on and she just turned the radio off and said “No.”
But I do get stuck on repetitive listens with some songs from time to time that just hit something in me – I remember the first time that happened was listening to the Miguel Bosé song Como un Lobo, I would rewind that song forever on the cassette, I must have been like 5 years old. Right now I have David Bowie’s Up the Hill Backwards on repeat for some reason. I almost exclusively listen to albums, not singles, not playlists, but some songs just stay in my brain for weeks and I need to feed it constantly and I’ll keep singing them. It can be a pain for people around me to hear me sing the same part of a song forever.
Why did your parents name you Flores twice?
My mother is the biggest José José fan in the world. She could’ve named me José but the 80s were a tricky decade for a lot of people.
If you could move to one city in Mexico, where would it be? One city in the US?
I’ve been living in Huasca the last couple of months with my wife. It’s this beautiful town in Hidalgo, close to where we grew up (Pachuca, capital of the state) and I’d love to move there indefinitely, but it’s hard letting go of commodities of big cities.
In the states, I really like San Diego, and it’s close to TJ, so you can get legit mariscos and tacos al pastor. But I don’t know, maybe a small town in California would be great.
Tell us about your album. How many blunts long is it? That’s to say, how many blunts can you smoke before the run time is through, using the International Metric of 5 minutes and 17 seconds per blunt?
I think it’s like half an hour long so you can squeeze maybe a 6th blunt if you really focus, and break some records/rules.
The album is called Uno, I recorded it in my studio in Mexico City called Números Rojos.
It has nine songs, one of which is Placed, the first single that you can check out right now on all streaming platforms.
If someone broke into your house and threatened you at gunpoint but gave you the chance to play one song off your album to convince them to leave in peace, what song would it be?
Probably Outline, cuz it’s the shortest. You don’t wanna be for too long with a psychopath.
What song should I play with my first cup of coffee? Why?
I’d do Caliber. It has a nice call of the wild/contemplative vibe. Gives room for introspection, even if the lyrics are about being wasted.
Tell us about your transnational label launched during quarantine.
When I was about to finish the album I hit Josh up because he is like the only friend I could think of that would be up to putting a record out with me. He liked the record and he had the idea of Cosmic Journeys for a while and this was a perfect way of taking step one.
I think music has been the driving force for both of us in our lives so this is us riding that wave to something bigger and better, we hope. We are still figuring things out but up until now it has been very fun. We are trying to have a very elastic vision of what an indie label can do or be in 2020. Aside from floresflores there’s also gonna be radio shows, more music projects from different genres, merch, videos.
In quarantine, the differences between days can be difficult to discern. But this day right here?
This?
This was clearly a good Friday.
What can I say that hasn’t already been said in a strongly worded petition to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?